Orchard Grove (35 page)

I had one chance, and I took it.

Positioning myself in the center of the road on the parallel line-stripes, I turned to face the truck down. The driver slammed on the brakes, the dump truck’s big wide tires screeching, burning rubber, its metal dump fishtailing sideways. I stood my ground knowing I couldn’t move out of the way if I wanted to. I just didn’t have the energy or the strength in my foot, or the rest of my body for that matter, necessary to make the move. The truck skidded maybe twenty feet, horn blaring, metal banging against metal, straining and tearing, exhaust blowing out black smoke, engine revving RPMs, gears crunching. Until finally the truck came to a stop only inches from my face.

The door opened and a tall wiry young man in a white T-shirt and wearing a straw cowboy hat, poked his head out.

“Are you fucking out of your mind?” he said, his eyes hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses.

I shoved the shotgun stock against my shoulder, planted a bead.

“Get the hell back behind the wheel,” I snarled, my beating heart jammed inside my throat.

Behind me, the trooper cruisers were closing in, their red and white LED flashers bright even against the brilliant mid-day sun. I hobbled over to the passenger side door and, planting myself on my bad foot, hopped up onto the running board, opened the door, and shoved myself inside with a scream that might have cracked the windshield if it wasn’t made of safety glass.

Up ahead, the troopers made a barricade by having stopped their cruisers in the middle of the road, positioning them perpendicular to the opposing roadsides. They exited the vehicles, weapons in hand, crouching down behind them for protection.

The trucker turned to me.

“That foot looks like shit,” he said.

“So I’m told,” I grunted.

“It’s bleeding bad. Smells too.”

I peered down at it. The Flex Seal hadn’t worked after all. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re the one with the gun. What do you want me to do? Turn around, go the other way?”

I cocked a shell into the shotgun chamber.

“Blow through them,” I demanded.

He just stared at me through those impossibly shiny sunglasses.

“That shit only works in the movies.”

“I’m aware of that. So let’s pretend we’re shooting a movie.”

“You serious?”

“Do it. Do it, please. Pretty please.”

The trucker turned to face the road.

“Lord have mercy on my soul,” he said.

“Action!” I said.

He shoved the floor-mounted stick into gear, then gave it the gas.

T
he big truck took on speed.

It jerked, bucked, and bounced. When the passenger side windshield exploded, I dropped down onto my left shoulder.

“Holy Christ they’re shooting at us,” he said.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Walt.”

“Walt, just keep on trucking.”

I brushed the pebble-like shards of shattered safety glass off of me.

Sitting up fast, I swung the shotgun around, aimed it not for the troopers but the closest cruiser and triggered off a shell. The shot blew out a tire on the vehicle directly ahead of me as we closed in on it.

The troopers leapt off the side of the road like they were abandoning ship.

“We’re gonna ram them!” the trucker screamed, his voice an octave higher than God intended.

“That would be the point. Don’t stop!”

Grabbing the metal underside of the seat, I held on while we barreled through both cruisers.

I
don’t know why I started to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it had something to do with acting out a scene I might have written for an Arnold Schwarzenegger action/thriller and actually succeeding without getting ourselves killed or totaling the truck. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut.

“See, Walt,” I said, raising myself up. “Just like a movie.”

Even he had to laugh.

“Gotta admit,” he said, as he bounced in his seat, “that wasn’t entirely no fun.”

He hadn’t slowed down since we blew through the cruisers. His cowboy booted foot was still firmly planted on the gas, his right hand gripping the ball-head on the stick shift, left hand on the big wheel. As we came upon the motel, I turned to view the parking lot. I saw something very strange. I saw Detective Miller standing all alone in the middle of the lot. He had one hand shoved in his trouser pockets, almost casually. And with the other one, he was holding something up for me to see. It was the security tape cassette from the convenience store. The tape I’d tossed into the dumpster out back. He was wearing this big grin like, “Gotcha asshole!”

As we passed, he pulled his free hand out of his pocket, tossed me a quick wave, then made like a pistol with thumb and index finger, and pointed it at the security tape. The scene was at once odd and somehow frightening. He wasn’t giving chase or taking aim at the truck with his sidearm. He just stood there waving at me like he no longer needed to go after me at all. Like my immediate future was already doomed with or without his efforts. And he had the whole thing on tape to prove it.

I turned toward the open road, and what up until now had been a wide smile on my face disintegrated like a bullet through an apple. Instead, my brain filled with cold realization. Maybe I’d just escaped the state troopers. But as far as Miller was concerned, I was already caught, already sentenced before a jury of my peers.

Like the ghost of John Cattivo said, I was already dead.

S
he holds Miller’s hand all the way from the interview room to the front vestibule and the guard sergeant’s desk. She insists her mother is coming for her. And when the weary middle-aged woman arrives to claim her daughter, she bursts out in tears.

“Why don’t you listen to me, Lana?” the woman cries, her long dark hair streaked with strands of stark gray that seem more like battle-scars than the result of the organic aging process. “Look what happens when you sneak out at night? You can get yourself killed.”

Lana lowers her head, stares at the scuffed linoleum flooring, but in her young brain she runs through the faces of the men and boys she’s killed over the years, beginning with her stepfather. She sees that funny look their faces assumed the moment they knew their throats were about to be cut not by a big bad man, but a beautiful, young, blonde teenager. How could they have been so stupid, so naïve, so trusting?

“You should listen to your mom,” Miller says, releasing her hand. “She knows best. She loves you.”

“I will,” Lana smiles, shifting her now empty hand to her mother’s trembling hand. “From this moment on, I will listen to my mom.”

Miller locks eyes on Lana’s crying heart tattoo as she exists the APD building. It’s a mark he will never forget for as long as he lives.

B
ad idea: riding a heavy-duty dump truck all the way into Albany.

I might as well ride a helium balloon back into town, a brass band playing in the whicker basket as I floated over the downtown sky rises and the asphalt roofs of the outlying suburban homes. I didn’t want take the same route back that I’d taken out here, either. Nassau alone would be crawling with cops and troopers. Truth is, I didn’t care about getting caught, necessarily. That wasn’t the real issue here. The cops were going to catch up to me sooner or later. Probably sooner.

What I really wanted was to buy enough time to get back to Albany and to Lana and Susan. Once I managed that, I’d find a way to extract a confession from one or both of them. A confession wouldn’t keep me out of prison, but it might keep me off Death Row. Hell, a full confession might allow me the leverage to strike up a deal with Miller, potentially reducing any charges he was dying to lob at me.

Of course, he’d have to believe me when I told him I acted out of self-defense when I hit the old clerk over the head with the shotgun stock. That might take some doing, and the talents of a savvy lawyer. Miller might be an Albany cop, but he wasn’t stupid. If forensic and circumstantial evidence existed of my having acted in self-defense, he would not be blind to it. I had to believe that.

My only other choice would be to lie down and die now.

As Walt and I approached Route 90, the east/west highway that would lead me directly back into the city, I instructed him to take the entrance marked West Albany. But as soon as he got on the three-lane interstate, I made him pull over onto the shoulder to let me out. Funny thing is, he didn’t seem all that excited and relieved over getting rid of me. Instead he pulled off onto the wide shoulder and turned to me with an expression best described as concerned. As though during the short time we spent together, we’d become solid friends.

“Listen Walt,” I said, “I need something else from you.”

He nodded.

“I need your clothes. The cops have a make on what I’m wearing.”

He sort of looked himself up and down.

“I’m wearing jeans same as you,” he said. Then, “I got an idea though.” He reached behind the seat, pulled out a pair of overalls. “I wear these sometimes when I’m dumping fine sand. Stuff gets in your hair, your ears, your nose, your pores.”

I locked eyes on the dark blue acrylic overalls.

“They’ll have to do,” I said, as I proceeded to slip them on, zipping up the front.

“I can take you where you’re going,” Walt said, after I was dressed.

“You definitely
do not
want to do that,” I said. “The place will be crawling with cops. They’ll shoot us on sight. You need to get rid of me and then head to the nearest police station. Tell them everything.” I opened the door, grabbed the shotgun, gingerly stepped out onto the running board, all the time wincing in pain. “Remember, tell them everything. Don’t lie or withhold. Tell them the absolute truth about how this little ride went down. They’ll believe you and let you go.”

He nodded, the brim on his straw cowboy hat waving up and down like a Japanese fan.

“It’s been quite the adventure,” he said, trying to work up a grin.

“Glad I could break up your day,” I said.

“Take care of that foot,” he said.

Stepping off the running board onto my good foot and onto the shotgun stock, which I once more used as a crutch, I closed the truck door. I stepped out of the way as he pulled away from the curb and proceeded back onto the highway. Turning, I moved away from the roadbed and hid myself in a patch of woods where I would wait until nightfall. I also turned off my cell phone to save the battery. Under the cover of darkness, I’d get myself back to the city for a final showdown with my two lost loves.